Business Writing (ENGL 210)

Section: 20W #2435
Instructor:  G. Cycholl
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25AM – 11:15AM WTC

ENGL 210-20W is a writing intensive class

This course seeks to strengthen your skills in written business communication as well as your capacities in group discussion, planning, editing, and critique.  From this standpoint, we'll build not only on your abilities to develop a clear, concise writing style, but we'll also reconsider the goals of interoffice communication, particularly as posed by corporate cultures and the unique cultures developed within electronic communication and business journalism.  This course is designated as "writing intensive."  Therefore, your abilities to communicate effectively within individual written assignments (regular memos and e-mails) and ongoing individual/group projects and analyses will be the basis of assessment.  As much as possible, these course assignments will engage your areas of interest, experience, and expertise.  Another focus of the course will be to develop strong cover letters, resumes, and interview strategies for individual course participants.

Section: 21W #2436
Instructor:  S. Cheney
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30AM – 12:45PM WTC

ENGL 210-21W is a writing intensive class

Business writing courses offer students a competitive edge in the job market because they enhance your ability to make a valuable contribution to your current and future employers. In this course you will learn standard conventions and strategies for creating business documents, letters, memoranda, reports, and proposals. Utilizing both individual and group work, you will also learn to create reliable and effective projects on the Web. This course is writing intensive.

Section: 61W #2438
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 PM – 9:30PM WTC

ENGL 210-61W is a writing intensive class

Our course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience in reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including: memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group class presentation. This course is writing intensive.

Section: 62W #5422
Instructor:  J. Janangelo
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30PM WTC

ENGL 210-62W is a writing intensive class

Our course covers the rhetorical principles of effective writing, focusing on particular types of discourse practiced in business and professional settings. You will gain experience in reading and writing texts pertinent to business communication including: memos, proposals, letters, and resumes. There will be individual and collaborative projects; you will also give a group class presentation. This course is writing intensive.

Writing for Pre-Law Students (ENGL 211)

Section: 63W #2439
Instructor:  D. Gorski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 PM – 9:30PM WTC

ENGL 211-63W is a writing intensive class

In English 211, students will learn to develop some of the writing skills employed by law school students and attorneys.  These writing skills include the ability to write a case brief, an office memorandum, and a pre-trial motion. Students will also learn how to answer essay examination questions of the type given in law school and on a state bar examination.  In class discussions, students will develop the verbal skills necessary to take a legal position and defend it.  The mid-term and final examinations simulate law school examinations wherein the students will be given realistic hypothetical fact patterns to analyze using the IRAC method:  issue, rule, application, and conclusion. Learning how to cite to legal authority is a central part of the course. Readings include judicial opinions, statutes, and law review articles. The course is taught by a practicing attorney, and assumes no prior legal knowledge or studies.  This is a writing intensive course.

Section: 64W #10181
Instructor:  J. Hovey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 PM – 9:30PM WTC

ENGL 211-64W is a writing intensive class

Writing and research are essential for lawyers no matter what area they decide to practice in.  Lawyers must be able to write well in order to communicate effectively with their clients and argue for them in court. This course introduces pre-law students to legal analysis, research, and writing by providing a variety of legal writing experiences including case briefs, in-house memos, pleadings, motions, and trial briefs. Writing assignments will take shape through drafts, instructor feedback, peer review, and final revisions, allowing students to build a portfolio of their work over the semester. We will consider professional and ethical issues as well as research and argument skills in each assignment, and the semester will culminate in oral arguments on motions before the class "court."

Introduction to Poetry (ENGL 271)

Section: 02W #1545
Instructor:  J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 AM – 10:10 AM LSC

ENGL 271-02W is a writing intensive class

Why should we care about poetry – and how should we care about it?  And why do the answers to these two questions seem so similar?  We’ll start historically – who before us cared about poetry, and why?  We’ll study the pressure poems put on their historical moment, and how they’re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of “Shakespeare” as a figure, often at odds with the “evidence” of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems.  Most of the authors in our anthology were white, male, and rich – how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called “the canon”), and how has it, even in these same authors, blown apart all the stereotypes and orthodoxies we’d expect to find?  We’ll watch the invention not only of English (and then British) culture, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations – and most importantly, we’ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into the greatest vehicle of social (as well as aesthetic) contest.  Papers, exams, unlicensed dentistry.

Section: 03W #3454
Instructor:  H. Cramond
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:30 PM LSC

ENGL 271-03W is a writing intensive class

Students will learn critical terminology and gain overview of critical perspectives that will aid them in the analysis of poetry. Our primary text will be Perrine's Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, 13th Edition. Students will also read work from earlier periods and contemporary small presses.  To satisfy the Writing Intensive requirement, students will complete five short response papers, one longer essay and two essay exams. 

Section: 04W #3455
Instructor:  J. Jacobs
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

ENGL 271-04W is a writing intensive class

This course is not organized to turn people into poetry scholars, but to help them gain the freedom to be poetry readers.  It is designed to lead students to discover: how to have fun with poetry, how to get at the kinds of pleasures it offers (not the same as an ice cream cone!), how to use poetry as a resource in exploring one’s own life and experience.

We will use one of the major collections with poems from many periods, probably the NORTON ANTHOLOGY (5^th full edition, not the Shorter Edition).  But our stress will fall on modern writers.  We may supplement the anthology with a short original collection by a single author.  Three main papers will be required, plus a final exam.  I may make extended comments, but I won’t lecture.  Students should be willing to enter discussion as active participants, engaging one another in understanding shared readings.

Section: 05W #3457
Instructor:  J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

ENGL 271-05W is a writing intensive class

This course will introduce students to the analysis and interpretation of poetic writing as it has been practiced by a variety of authors in England and the United States.  General questions addressed in the course will include poetry's various genres, its conventional forms, and its special capacities as well as limitations as a mode of writing.  The course will also consider how specific works or authors might resist or reinforce the formation of class, gender, or racial differences.  Students will write weekly responses, a mid-term exam, two short papers (5-6 pages), and a longer final paper (10-12 pages). 

Section: 06W #5423
Instructor:  D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM LSC

ENGL 271-06W is a writing intensive class

Through close attention to the basic elements of poetry--voice, rhythm, form, tone, etc.--students will develop their ability to read, enjoy, and write about this art. Readings for the course include poems written by over 60 authors. The bulk of our class time will be spent in discussion and analysis of these works. Assignments will include writing exercises and short essays, reading quizzes, and midterm and final exams.

Introduction to Drama (ENGL 272)

Section: 056 #2742
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC

This course of studies will include texts that actively critique the importance of religion on the creative imagination, in particular Catholicism.  The quest for meaning, whether religious or secular, can lead to some interesting works of drama. Modernist theater, for instance, with its quest for newness, has sought to dramatize the problems associated with religious faith (Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot).  While the depictions can sometimes be sympathetic, sometimes skeptical, there is an underlying affirmation, and legitimization of the immense influence religion has had on forming our understanding of life.  In this class we will also explore the movement away from the classical form of drama towards what Brecht calls ‘epic theatre’. 

Intro. to Drama covers literature from 20th Century and 21st Century

Section: 057 #4056
Instructor:  V. Foster
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

In this class we will read and discuss a variety of plays by dramatists from the Greeks to the present:  Euripides, Shakespeare, Sheridan, Ibsen, Chekhov, Glaspell, Brecht, Williams, Beckett, Churchill, and Parks.  Topics will include the relationship between text and performance, dramatic genres (especially tragedy and comedy), dramatic conventions or forms (realism, expressionism, epic theatre, and theatre of the absurd), themes such as marriage and justice, and issues of race, class, and gender.  Discussion, videos, in-class performances.  We will attend a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire at Mullady Theatre (LSC).  Requirements:  class participation, three 4-page critical essays, midterm and final exams.  

Section: 07W #1547
Instructor:  T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:20 PM LSC

ENGL 272-07W is a writing intensive class

(See above)

Introduction to Fiction (ENGL 273)

Section: 058 #3460
Instructor:  A. Marbais
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 AM – 9:05 AM LSC

This course is an introduction to prose fiction in its many forms (short stories, flash fiction and the novel).  We will cover a wide cross section of authors in an effort to explore a variety of literary styles and themes.  Students will discuss, analyze and formulate arguments about the techniques and devices used to make the author's prose successful.  They will become comfortable with interpreting and discussing literary criticism. Writers covered in this course include Joyce Carol Oates, Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, Raymond Carver, Amy Tan and others.

Section: 059 #3461
Instructor:  P. Sorenson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 AM – 9:05 AM LSC

The themes of this class are metamorphosis and mutation. We will be reading a range of story styles (realism, magical realism, minimalism, etc.) and types (short fiction, novellas, and novels) that depict transformations: sometimes sinister and overt, sometimes subtle and obscure. Change is the lens through which we will examine every story: changes in characters, in settings, and in perspectives. We will also examine how different critical points of view can deeply change a story’s meaning. Most generally, this course will act as an introduction to some contemporary and not-so-contemporary fiction writers and the methods by which we analyze these writers’ works. We will examine what stories might be arguing, what they suggest about the historical moment in which they were written, and how they relate to or comment on other texts. Throughout the semester, you will be asked to write brief responses (1-2 pages) to the fiction we read for class. You will also write two longer papers (5-7 pages) that require a bit of research.

Section: 060 #3458
Instructor:  M. O’Connell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

This course is an introduction to the structure and design of fiction, primarily the short story. Over the course of the semester we will read, discuss, and write about a number of stories, covering a variety of genres.  We will concentrate on the elements of the short story, focusing on style, characterization, symbolism and theme.  We will learn to situate a work of fiction in its cultural and historical moment, noting how what is said, or not said, in a given work is affected by the time period and social conditions in which it was written. By the end of the semester, we will have a better sense of how good fiction works, and why an author uses a particular structure for his/her story.  Assignments include regular quizzes and short writing assignments, as well as two longer essays and a final.

Section: 061 #3459
Instructor:  L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM LSC

This course is designed to follow a trajectory through various types of fiction, beginning with the origins of our cultural definition of “story”, through foundational texts of English Literature, English Literature’s influence, along with the power and problems of colonialism, on African literature, the genre of Science Fiction and the power of imagination, and contemporary experimental fiction that aims to innovate established forms in order to push our critical facilities, including a work of fiction designed specifically to be read on the internet. We will be reading novels, short stories and criticism of various lengths. The course is also designed to explore film as a newer and undeniably socially significant way to tell stories that can use the elements of its medium very specifically in the storytelling process to create new effects and new conclusions about our lives. Among the texts and films that we’ll be investigating are: Greek Myths, The Sleeping Beauty Variants, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Bartleby the Scrivener, The Illustrated Man, In Watermelon Sugar, Kindred, Crash and even electronic forms. The activities in this class include: lecture, class discussion, small group discussion, posting to Blackboard, and two exams.

Section: 062 #5424
Instructor:  TBA
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

Section: 603 #4058
Instructor:  A. Jochaniewicz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC

This course will focus mainly on short stories, beginning with literature from the mid nineteenth century and progressing to literature from the twenty-first century, but other forms of fiction, like flash fiction, the novella, and the novel will also be included.  This course will cover the foundational elements of fiction (e.g. theme, plot, setting, point of view, structure) and will graduate to larger theories, criticisms and contexts in reading and analyzing literature, which are  oftentimes defined with some “ism” (e.g. Marxism, feminism, modernism, magical realism, post-modernism, historicism, etc.).   The primary goal of this course is to train students in the understanding, appreciation, and criticism of prose fiction and to have students leave this class reading differently—and better—than ever before. 

Introduction to Shakespeare (ENGL 274)

Section: 088 #6417
Instructor:  L. Conley
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

In this course, we will read a selection of eight plays from the Shakespeare canon, representing the four genres of comedy, tragedy, history, and romance.  Approximately half of these plays will be examples of Shakespeare's collaboration with other authors of his time.  By looking at Shakespeare as a co-author and as a member of the theatrical community of early modern London, we will examine what it meant to be a playwright in Shakespeare's world, and how that occupation fit in with the larger social and political framework surrounding the composition of these texts.  We will have weekly quizzes, some group work, a midterm, a project, and a final exam.  You may also be required to attend a live performance at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (for which group-rate tickets will be available).   

Section: 08W #1549
Instructor:  J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:30 PM LSC

ENGL 274-08W is a writing intensive class

In this course we will study eight of Shakespeare's plays, including plays from a variety of genres--comedy, history, tragedy, romance--and from various stages of his career as a playwright. We will consider the plays in relation to the intellectual, political, and social contexts in which they were produced, the theatrical practices and conventions of the age, and Shakespeare's own development as a playwright. We will also explore ways in which the plays allow for a variety of interpretations and kinds of performance, and consider various critical approaches. Because this course is writing intensive, there will be frequent brief writing assignments, both in and out of class. Requirements will include papers, response papers, a midterm, and a final.  Please note: English majors should take English 326, not English 274.

Section: 09W #4059
Instructor:  M. Shapiro
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM LSC

ENGL 274-09W is a writing intensive class

The course will cover a representative sampling of 7-8 plays, chosen to illustrate early, middle, and late phases of Shakespeare’s work in comedy, history, tragedy, and romance.  We will look at such matters as language, poetry, historical contexts, and sources, but there will be a consistent emphasis on the plays as texts for theatrical performance.  That is to say, we will discuss stage history and adaptations and look at video clips of recorded productions.  Students may also be required to attend As You Like It on Navy Pier late in the term (at a reduced groups rate).  Students will be required act in one in-class workshop production of a short scene.  The primary text is The Necessary Shakespeare (Pearson/Longman).  There will be quizzes, papers, a midterm, and a final.

Section: 10W #4060
Instructor:  J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

ENGL 274-08W is a writing intensive class

Chief American Writers I to 1866 (ENGL 277)

Section: 063 #2620
Instructor:  V. Bell
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 PM – 1:25 PM LSC

This course focuses on the study of selected American writers from the earlier period.  These may include Columbus, Cabeza de Vaca, Thoreau, Equiano, Dickinson, Bradstreet,Melville,  Douglass, and others.  In this section, we will explore the question of what counts as “American literature” and who counts as an “American author”in the earlier period.  Because the United States did not exist as such for much of this period, the referent for the word “America” was more fluid and multiple than it is today.  The boundaries between territories–and eventually nations–were continually contested. We will examine early literature in this context by reading authors froma wide variety of social and geographic positions in the so-called Western Hemisphere and by reading a variety of texts: letters, journals, speeches, oral literature and song, as well as fictional prose and poetry.  We will also examine theories of colonial encounters, race, gender, and nationalism.  Theoretical and critical readings may include work by Peter Hulme, Mary Louise Pratt, Paul Gilroy, and others. The course requires active class participation, quizzes, midterm and final exams, and one research paper.

Required Texts:

Paul Lauter, General Editor.  The Heath Anthology of American Literature,Volume A, Colonial Period to 1800.  (fifth edition)

Paul Lauter, General Editor.  The Heath Anthology of American Literature,Volume B, Early Nineteenth Century, 1800-1865. (fifth edition)

Handoutsand Reserve Readings.

This course will fulfill the literature in English before 1900 and after 1700 requirement.

Chief American Writers II 1865-Present (ENGL 278)

Section: 064 #3464
Instructor:  C. Wachal
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 PM – 9:05 PM LSC

Cornel West is not the first to observe that “America is a Romantic project.”  Critic Douglas Robinson has argued that American literature is “definitively Romantic,” even in its deviations from the Emersonian Romantic tradition.  Of course, West is also not the first to argue that “We’ve got to push all that Romanticism to the side.”  This course will examine authors and texts that push Romanticism aside.  We will look to the aftermath of three great wars (Civil War, The Great War, World War II) for how a certain tradition of writers construct American narratives without resorting to notions of wholeness, heroism, intuition, individual genius, or the veneration of nature.  These writers come from within the American “mainstream” as well as from ethnic and religious minorities, immigrant communities, and other marginalized groups.  They participate in all phases of the development of American literature, including realism, naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, and contemporary global fiction.  This course will examine how this anti-Romantic tradition evolves to respond to new historical contexts.  Authors considered will include Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Henry James, Edgar Alan Poe, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James T. Farrell, W.H. Auden, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Walker, Cormac McCarthy, and Donald Barthelme, among others.  Course work will include critical papers, close readings, and a pair of quizzes.

Medieval Culture (ENGL 279) 

Section: 065 #5425
Instructor:  J. Hastings
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM LSC

This course will focus on the textual records of the English Middle Ages in contexts delimited by history, art history, and material culture as well as Classical and Continental literature. Through rigorous engagement of these literary works within these contexts, students will come to understand more fully some of the broad trajectories and key ideas of the period. Major works to be studied will include Gildas’s De Excidio, Beowulf, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

 Editions adopted:

Bede, the Venerable. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Judith McClure and

Roger Collins, eds. Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2008. Print.

Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition. Howell Chickering, trans and ed. New York: Anchor,

1977. Print.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales, 2nd ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson, eds. New

York: Norton, 2005. Print.

Malory, Sir Thomas. King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales. Eugène Vinaver, ed.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975. Print

Sir Gawain and the Green Night, Patience, Pearl: Verse Translations. Marie Borroff, trans and

ed. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.

African-American Literature (ENGL 282)

Section: 066 #3465
Instructor:  L. Wyse
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 AM – 9:05 AM LSC

This course will inquire, broadly, "What counts?" as African-American literature.  We'll begin by discussing how and why literary canons are formed and perpetuated, before devoting our particular attention to the relatively recent conception of an African-American literary canon and its relationship to the broader canon of U.S. literatures.  Recognizing that a course syllabus is itself a kind of canon, we'll look at a range of works by African-American authors from all available genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and maybe more) and time periods (18th century to the present).  Critical essays (including a final research paper) will constitute the majority of graded work, but each student will also be asked to give a short presentation of a text not included on our syllabus, positioning it with regard to the questions of canonicity that frame the course.  In addition, we will analyze the attempts of various literary anthologies to encapsulate the field.

This course fulfills the multicultural requirement.

Section: 11W #1552
Instructor:  B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC

ENGL 282-11W is a writing intensive class

This course serves as an introduction to the African American literary tradition. In addition to reading and interpreting works by prominent African-American writers from the era of slavery to the contemporary present, we will also discuss the major shifts and movements that have constituted the black literary tradition, like the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the ?Post-Soul? era. We will consider representative works by African American novelists, poets, and essayists and consider the various ways they respond to dominant artistic conventions of their respective periods.  Some questions we will consider are: What is African American literature? What are some major themes and concerns that have defined African-American literature? And, where does the future of African-American literature seem to point? Requirements for this course include regular attendance, three short essays, in-class writing assignments, quizzes, and a mid-term and a final exam. This course is writing-intensive and fulfills the multicultural and post-1900 literature requirements.

Section: 12W #4061
Instructor:  B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

ENGL 282-12W is a writing intensive class

This course serves as an introduction to the African American literary tradition. In addition to reading and interpreting works by prominent African-American writers from the era of slavery to the contemporary present, we will also discuss the major shifts and movements that have constituted the black literary tradition, like the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the ?Post-Soul? era. We will consider representative works by African American novelists, poets, and essayists and consider the various ways they respond to dominant artistic conventions of their respective periods.  Some questions we will consider are: What is African American literature? What are some major themes and concerns that have defined African-American literature? And, where does the future of African-American literature seem to point? Requirements for this course include regular attendance, three short essays, in-class writing assignments, quizzes, and a mid-term and a final exam. This course is writing-intensive and fulfills the multicultural and post-1900 literature requirements.

Women in Literature (ENGL 283)

Section: 068#2165
Instructor:  P. Warren
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15 AM – 9:05 AM LSC

ENGL 283-068, Women in Literature, will focus on the concept and practice of “women in literature”, both through woman as subject and woman as writer. We will read various diverse texts in multiple genres, either written by female authors and/or featuring female characters, and reflect upon them in our discussions and writing. We will seek to explore and challenge various constructs of “women in literature”, both those on the page and in our own conceptions.

This course will focus on how to best communicate and express your thoughts clearly within the discipline of literary studies and criticism; how to become practiced in using writing as a tool of learning; how to demonstrate effective verbal, visual and written communication skills and sensitivities; and how to demonstrate effective critical thinking skills and dispositions. The course will use writing as a tool in the comprehension, comparison, synthesis and critical analysis of ideas, and to communicate and express thoughts clearly in written form.

Section: 069#3468
Instructor:  L. Wagner
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20 AM – 10:10 AM LSC

Writers revising or adapting Shakespeare often seek remedies for perceived problems surrounding gender in the plays, especially the performance of femininity.  This course explores the difficulty of accessing "true" women in Shakespeare's theatrical world-a world where male playwrights created female characters to be performed by cross-dressed boys.  We will analyze contemporary revisions and adaptations of Shakespeare across a variety of genres (including short stories, plays, drag performances, and film), and ask whether the performances of femininity found there indeed are more "true."  A central consideration of the course is how performance makes gendering visible in all of its compulsions, pleasures, and confusions.  Requirements will include regular exercises and several short essays.

Section: 101#5426
Instructor:  S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

 This course will introduce students to important developments, approaches, and questions in contemporary Feminist Theory – including women of color feminisms, postmodern feminisms, queer theory, disability feminisms, and ecofeminisms, among others.  Our readings from the anthologies will present breadth and diversity of arguments and styles to be balanced by in-depth exploration of the very different critical trajectories of two leading theorists, Donna Haraway and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.  Course assignments are designed to engage students in a real practice of Feminist Theory, including regular written responses, a class presentation, and a final conference paper. 

Women in Literature: Deconstructing the Diva

Section: 13W#3470
Instructor:  M. Bradshaw
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:30 PM LSC

ENGL 283-13W is a writing intensive class

Revered and reviled, imitated and appropriated, divas are perhaps the most visible women in our culture.  On the one hand, as a woman who stares down cameras and sings loudly and unabashedly, the diva represents empowerment: she is loud, courageous, and often outrageous.  On the other hand, the diva is also a figure of extreme appropriation: consumed and absorbed into people’s lives, she is the object of obsessive fandom.  In shaping her own identity, the diva often serves as a vehicle for shaping others’.  Through fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, film, and performance theory, this class will explore the paradoxes and problems of the “woman with a voice” and her place in contemporary conceptions of femininity.

Section: 14W#3471
Instructor:  S. Weller
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:30 PM LSC

ENGL 283-14W is a writing intensive class

Memoir, as a literary genre, has garnered much critical attention in the last decade (both positive and negative).  But what exactly is memoir?  What characteristics does it have that are different than fiction, or straight non-fiction and autobiography?  If an author is writing from memory, and oftentimes memory is hazy, or at the least subjective, what is the 'truth' in memoir? Is there any material or issue that is still considered taboo when women write about their lives?  These are some of the questions we will address during the semester while reading a selection of creative non-fiction memoirs by a wide range of contemporary female writers. One of the themes we will investigate is the concept of secrets and silence that pervade many of the texts we will focus on.  Some writers may include: Patricia Hampl, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Karr, bell hooks, Kathryn Harrison, Marjane Satrapi, Alice Sebold, Jill Christman, and Anne Fessler.  Crosslisted with Women's Studies, English 283 is designed to meet the "literary knowledge and experience" requirements of the Loyola Core.  Focusing on literature written by 20^th century women authors, this course is designed to help students gain knowledge of women's lives and writings; to show them the difference gender makes to the writing, reading, and interpretation of literature; to train them in the analysis of literature; and to teach them how to describe, analyze, and formulate arguments about literary texts.

Section: 202#
Instructor:  A. Coleman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM WTC

The short story is a specialized form, requiring economy and craftsmanship and offering, in only a few pages, an entire world of experience and meaning. We'll look at short stories by women written in diverse contexts, including the Civil War, the golden age of science fiction, and the feminist movement, investigating the ways women have used (and continue to use) this form to engage with social, political, and aesthetic ideologies. Assignments will include papers & presentations.

Introduction to Film History (ENGL 284)

Section: 070#2166
Instructor: M. Pribisic
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

This course is an introduction to the history and aesthetics of film.  The class watches each week (with screenings done outside of the classroom) a selection of the key works from the field of cinema studies and engages, through class discussions, in a close analysis of each film.  The weekly viewings are to be accompanied with historical and critical readings to help students  develop a basic film studies vocabulary and demonstrate  effective verbal and written  skills in reviewing and critically analyzing the films (there are three five-page written assignments for the course).

This Course fulfills the Artistic Knowledge Core Curriculum requirement and is cross listed with Global and International Studies.

Section: 16W#1596
Instructor: A. Kessel
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

ENGL 284-16W is a writing intensive class

This course will examine the history of global cinema in its first 100 years. Film is a visual and narrative art, but it is also an industry, a technology, and a means of political and cultural expression. Our class will consider all these facets of cinema. We will view, discuss, and write about movies, movements, and film makers from many nations, including France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan, India, Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States. This course fulfills the Artistic Knowledge and Experience requirement in the Core Curriculum and is cross listed with Global and International Studies.

Nature in Literature (ENGL 288)

Section: 071#1603
Instructor: S. Jones
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

In this course (for university core credit) we'll study the cultural history of the relationship of people and the environment, as represented in a selection of British writing during a crucial period of literary history—the Romantic period of 1789-1832—but with additional works from other periods to extend the contexts of our discussions. The focus will be on the historical crux of Romantic literature and its representations of consciousness, imagination, art, technology, of human speciation, and the very idea of “Nature” in the modern sense, all of which raise key questions about the historical roots of our own concern with environmental, social, and political justice, for example, as well as questions about the social and “natural” contexts of literary art and representation. Requirements will include writing assignments, class participation, midterm and final exams. Required book: Richey and Robinson, eds. New Riverside edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads.

Section: 60W#2743
Instructor: M. DeLancey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 7:00PM – 9:30 PM LSC

ENGL 288-60W is a writing intensive class

We will treat the idea of “Nature” in the broadest possible sense, as that which encompasses us, and yet in a sense is other than us, and we will be reading texts that provide the widest possible historical range of attitudes toward it, discussing them in roughly the historical sequence in which they occur.  The syllabus will include the following texts: the Bhagavad Gita; Plato’s  Phaedrus; the Book of Job from the Old Testament; St. Paul’s Epistles; Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; a selection of poems by William Wordsworth;  Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Society in Literature (ENGL 289)

Section: 071#4063
Instructor: Ma. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 8:15AM – 9:05 AM LSC

In this course, we'll look at the ways that poetic forms--and specifically British Romantic poetic forms--interact with their social, political and historical contexts. We'll read the poetry (and some prose) of Blake, Smith, Robinson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats and others, and we'll discuss in detail generic forms (e.g. lyric and epic), material forms (e.g. the book), stanzaic forms (e.g. ottava rima and ballad), and quintessentially Romantic forms like the fragment poem. Selected criticism will both provide students with models of close reading and demonstrate how form can be read in relation to historical context. Two papers will be required.

Standing Out and Fitting In: Identity, Culture, and Countercultures
Section: 072#1623
Instructor: D. Braud
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 9:20AM – 10:10 AM LSC

This course will address literary representations of identity formation in the face of social hegemony by examining the dynamic of mainstream culture versus counter-culture in diverse time periods and socio-cultural settings. Identity expressed through markers such as race, gender, sexuality, class, political affiliation, caste, and national or regional origin are always embedded in a cultural context which accepts some formulations of identity as acceptable and some as unacceptable. Nevertheless, those identities deemed unacceptable by mainstream society are embraced by counter-cultures because they serve as an embodied critique of a society’s ideologies. The texts in this class will be used to examine how social norms help shape identity through a character’s acceptance or rejection of those norms. Novels include: Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Jack Kerouac, On the Road; Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke; William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham; Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye; Zadie Smith, White Teeth; and Thorn Kief Hillsbery, What We Do Is Secret. Secondary sources focusing on literary theories of identity formation will supplement other readings. Grades will be based on one short paper, one long paper, a mid-term exam, a final exam, participation in class discussions and several short in-class writing prompts.

This class fulfills the multicultural requirement.

Section: 073#3186
Instructor: L. Janowski
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

Unlike cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia which grew at a relatively lazy pace, Chicago virtually exploded from trading post to a city of muscle, influence, and beauty in one tumultuous century and continues into the 21^st, a growth traceable in writers from Theodore Dreiser, Jane Addams and Carl Sandburg to Upton Sinclair, David Mamet and Gwendolyn Brooks. You're fortunate to be living (at least for a time) in a city so rich in examples of this cross-fertilization of literature and society. We will read a wide range of fiction, poetry and drama and write reflections on the reading, but our course will also require exploration outside the classroom — a discovery of the ongoing literary life of the city and its influence on wider society.

Section: 074#4064
Instructor: L. Goldstein
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30AM – 12:45 PM LSC

This course will involve reading and raise discussions about the most pertinent issues in the construction of what we consider to be modern society, the most contemporary issues we face, and how literature specifically formulates a space for contemplation and critical thought. Among the concerns this class will raise are: gender, race, ethics and the role of media in perpetuating ideas. We will be reading a variety of genres including poetry, plays, short stories and novels from various cultures and eras. We’ll also be watching a few films. Among the texts and films that we’ll be investigating are: Madame Bovary, Lolita,The Social Network, Middlesex, and the Merchant of Venice. The activities in this class include: lecture, class discussion, small group discussion, posting to Blackboard, and two exams.

Passionate Attachments
Section: 075#4065
Instructor: R. Rodriguez
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM LSC

This course will examine the complex bonds between language and emotion in narratives that dramatize questions of identity and belonging in the Americas.  We will analyze the emotional dimension of modern discourses of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality (i.e. fictions of identity) in literary works that foreground issues of kinship, lineage, and regional and national belonging (i.e. fictions of community).  We will consider these works in their turbulent contexts (e.g. colonization, slavery, revolution, nationalism, decolonization, and exile) while also being mindful of how these fictions of being and belonging travel across time and place. We will read works by Jean Rhys, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Michelle Cliff, Junot Diaz, and Edwidge Danticat.  Course requirements include class participation, two essays (5-6 pages) and a final.

Human Values in Literature (ENGL 290)

Literacy Center Honors
Section: 01H#
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30PM – 10:00 PM LSC

Section: 076#1626
Instructor: T. Whitt
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

What exactly is “freedom”?  What are the various ways that we define and describe it?  Can we define freedom by its absence?  In this course we will read a variety of short stories and the novels listed below, that will help us explore these questions, among others, and discover why we human value the concept(s) of freedom so highly.  Coursework will consist of three minor papers (3-5 pages each); online discussions of the texts using Blackboard; content quizzes; a comprehensive final exam; and a final research paper (roughly 7-10 pages) on a novel of your own choosing that explores the idea of freedom.

Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

Push: A Novel – Sapphire

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood

It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis

1984 – George Orwell

Section: 077#5439
Instructor: J. Kolkey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
8:30 AM – 9:45 AM LSC

Revolutionary discourse is deeply ingrained in our political thought, defining the conversations around a changing Middle East, as well as domestic protest movements.  This section will investigate the ideals and ideology of revolution in a variety of historical, cultural, and literary contexts. We will read novels, poetry, and essays emerging from revolutionary and counterrevolutionary thought, considering how literature reflects, and sometimes contributes to, the causes, challenges, and outcomes of political revolutions. Our texts will include works by John Milton, Thomas Paine, William Blake, Percy Shelley, George Orwell, and Marjane Sartrapi, among others. Graded requirements will consist of two short papers, an oral presentation, a midterm examination, and participation in class discussion.

Section: 101#5440
Instructor: M. Owen
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 PM – 1:25 PM LSC

In this course, we will look at transgression – political, religious, generic, linguistic, sexual, gender, etc. – as it is represented in early modern literature. We'll ask questions such as the following: What constitutes transgression? How does transgression defy yet also participate in social norms, and political and religious orthodoxies? In what ways do transgressive persons, places, things, actions, behaviors, relationships, and texts subvert or challenge authority? Are transgressions ultimately outlets or releases permitted by authorities? What does transgression reveal about early modern subjectivity, and what does it conceal? We will read works by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and others. There will be two papers and weekly quizzes, and students are expected to contribute to class discussion.

Section: 623#
Instructor: J. Hovey
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00PM – 9:30 PM LSC

This course will look at how human values are represented in novels, graphic novels, short stories, and films about zombies.  Although there are several prototypical zombie novels in the nineteenth century, the zombie is a twentieth-century creation that helps voice popular anxieties about immigration, disease, class, sexuality, technology, race, national identity, and consumer culture, among other things.  We will look at some origins of the idea of the zombie in Romantic and late Victorian literature, study imperialist accounts of Haitian voodoo that introduced the zombie in popular culture and film in the 1930s, trace the evolution of the zombie as harbinger of disease and apocalypse during the Cold War and after, and analyze the zombie as a critique of consumer culture and late capitalism in the 1960s, 1980s, and today.  Texts may include Frankenstein, Dracula, "Herbert West--Reanimator," The Magic Island, I Am Legend, World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and The Walking Dead. Films may include White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead, 28 Days Later, and Stakeland, among others.

Survey of British Literature II (ENGL 298)

Section: 18W#3483
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

ENGL 298-18W is a writing intensive class

This course introduces students to the past two centuries of British literary history.  Students will learn to understand, appreciate, and critique works of the Romantic, Victorian, and modern periods in their cultural and historical contexts, and will gain an overview of the intellectual developments that characterize these periods, through reading representative examples of the major writers, ideas, and movements of each period.  Assignments will consist of ungraded but required reflection papers, two critical papers, and mid-term and final examinations.  (Fulfills the 1700-1900 period requirement for majors.) 

English Grammar (ENGL 303)

Section: 078#3484
Instructor: C. Fitzgerald
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30PM – 3:45 PM LSC

Irish Literature (ENGL 309)

Section: 079#3486
Instructor: T. Boyle
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 2:45 PM – 3:35 PM LSC

Since the late 19^th Century to the present day, Irish writers have sought to reflect, critique and critically examine significant cultural changes; increasing secularization, economic prosperity and political shifts in power.  In just over a century the social and political landscape of Irish society changed dramatically.  We will explore how these writers respond to these developments.  In particular we will analyze how religion has played a part in informing the imagination of Irish authors.   Whether the Church is regarded as a medieval institution, plagued with superstitious rituals, or an over bearing monolith of spiritual corruption, or simply a cultural reference point, there is no doubt that it has made its presence felt within minds of Irish writers.

The quest for authenticity, identity, becomes politicized in the imagination of the Irish writers. Early modernists such as Joyce, Johnston and Yeats vigorously work to debunk prevailing ideas of romantic nationalism.  This exciting period of literary change closely mirrors the advancement of social and political changes in Ireland and England; we read the works of these authors in light of these cultural and social movements.

Irish Lit. covers literature from 19th, 20th, and 21st C.

Studies in World Literature (ENGL 312)

Section: 080#4066
Instructor: H. Mann
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM LSC

Adopting an international and cross-disciplinary perspective, this course will introduce students to a range of critical and theoretical approaches to the study of world literatures in English, with particular attention to the issues of modern-day colonization and decolonization as experienced in Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia.  Drawing on the work of leading postcolonial theorists like Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, we will study the literary writings of E. M. Forster, Chinua Achebe, Jean Rhys, and Mohsin Hamid among others.  Discussion and research will center on such topics as colonial and postcolonial discourse, race, religion, nationalism, third world feminism, hybridity, diaspora, and globalization.

NOTE: This course meets the multicultural and post-1900 requirements of the English major.

The Writing of Poetry (ENGL 317)

Section: 081#1642
Instructor: V. Anderson
3.0 credit hours Lecture
M 2:45 PM – 5:15 PM LSC

Section: 082#1643
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

This course offers practice and instruction in the techniques and analysis of poetry through reading, writing, discussing, and revising poems. We will give particular attention to the unique challenges and opportunities  facing  beginning poets as we first seek to channel our  ideas and life experiences into poetry, to find and then develop our  own voices in relation to not only our own impulses but to “the tradition” and the aesthetically diverse,  complicated, and fascinating  world of contemporary poetry. What draws us to poetry in the first place? Why did it ever occur to us to do something like this? What does writing poetry offer us that nothing else can?  Poets who have recently published their first books of poetry will visit our class to reflect on these matters with us. The poems you write will be carefully read and critiqued by both your classmates and the instructor. The culmination of the course will be to compile a portfolio of  the work you have written over the term.

The Writing of Fiction (ENGL 318)

Section: 083#1644
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction through (a) reading and discussing the craft of master fiction writers; (b) writing three original stories; and (c) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow writers in a supportive workshop setting.  Class participation is emphasized.

Section: 604#1645
Instructor: B. Harper
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC

Students will learn the art and craft of writing fiction in a supportive, workshop environment through (a) reading master writers; (b) writing three original stories; and (c ) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow writers. Class participation is emphasized.

Writing Creative Nonfiction (ENGL 319)

Section: 084#3487
Instructor: H. Momyer
3.0 credit hours Lecture
T 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

This course will focus on the techniques of nonfiction in order to help students develop a vocabulary for talking about writing; learn to think critically about their own work as well as the work of others; and develop a skill-set and discipline to continue writing. Students will read nonfiction by several contemporary writers, focusing on a range from personal essays to cultural criticism, narratives to lyric essays. The ethical issues of creative nonfiction—considering the line between nonfiction and creativity and writing about real people—will be emphasized. Students will write four original essays. Three essays will be workshopped by the class as a whole or in small groups. The last essay will be a narrative, writer’s statement.

Chaucer (ENGL 322)

Section: 085#6162
Instructor: A. Frantzen
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00PM – 2:15 PM LSC

We will read The Canterbury Tales with a focus on masculinity in the Middle Ages. Chaucer's poetry should be one of the high points of the English major, but many students avoid the course or dread it because Chaucer's works are read in Middle English rather than in translation. Most students quickly see that Chaucer was a remarkable writer and that translations cannot capture the magic of his language. Learning enough Middle English to handle Chaucer's poetry takes work, but in a few weeks most students' translation skills are up to the task. We will study the formation of masculinity in three contexts: the court (tales told by the Knight, the Wife of Bath, the Manciple); the working world (tales told by the Miller, Reeve, the Pardoner), and the world of education (tales told by the Man of Law and the Prioress). We will discuss other contexts and other tales as well. Requirements include class participation; a series of quizzes, weekly during the first half of the course weeks, two papers (one 6-7 pages, one 8-10 pages), and a mid-term and a final examination. Texts: The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry Benson, and other readings to be announced. At Beck's Books.

Plays of Shakespeare (ENGL 326)

Section: 086#1652
Instructor: M. Shapiro
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

The course will cover a representative sampling of 7-8 plays, chosen to illustrate early, middle, and late phases of Shakespeare’s work in comedy, history, tragedy, and romance.  We will explore such matters as Shakespeare’s skill as a dramatist, his use of sources, his language and poetry, as well as consider the plays’ in their historical contexts. There will also will be a consistent emphasis on the plays as texts for theatrical performance.  That is to say, we will discuss stage history and adaptations and look at video clips of recorded productions.  Students may be required to attend a performance on Navy Pier (at reduced student rates) or somewhere else nearby  Students will also  be required to act in one in-class workshop production of a short scene.  The primary text is The Necessary Shakespeare (Pearson/Longman).  There will be papers, a midterm, perhaps some quizzes, and a final.

Section: 605#1654
Instructor: J. Knapp
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM LSC

This course will focus on a selection of Shakespeare’s plays in all the major genres (comedy, history, tragedy, and romance).  We will read the plays through a variety of critical approaches, taking into account the historical context in which they were produced.  To emphasize the importance of drama as intended for theatrical performance students will attend a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.  Throughout the course of the semester we will focus on the development of drama in England, the material history of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and the political and cultural place of the theater in Shakespeare’s England.  Plays will include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, Richard II, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, and The Winter’s Tale. The primary text will be David Bevington’s edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, 6th edition.  There will be papers, a midterm and a final.

Studies in the Renaissance (ENGL 328)

Section: 087#2744
Instructor: J. Biester
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 12:35 PM – 1:25 PM LSC

This course will focus on the earlier seventeenth century (1600-1660), and examine texts in various genres (poetry, prose, and drama), with an emphasis on material not covered in English 297 or English 325.  Among the topics we will consider are: the functions of literature in the culture of late Renaissance England; the relationship between the authors' aspirations as poets and as participants in political events; the relationship between the authors' gender and their literary products; and the literary, intellectual, and political contexts in which their work was produced.  Requirements will include two papers, a midterm, and a final.  This course fulfills the pre-1700 requirement for the English major.

British Literature: Romantic Period (ENGL 335)

Section: 089#1656
Instructor: J. Cragwall
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 10:25 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

In the last decade of the eighteenth century, the most powerful earthly king was beheaded, the institution of monarchy annihilated, and a God who had been heretofore supposed “Almighty” overthrown.  “The French Revolution,” conceded even Edmund Burke, its greatest British opponent, was “all circumstances taken together … the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world.”  We’ll study this time of exuberance, dispute, and outburst, in which every inherited piety and orthodoxy seemed debatable.  We’ll read poets and novelists, of course—but we’ll also read lunatics and prophets, opium addicts and slave traders, peasant bards and the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Lord Byron.  In William Wordsworth, we’ll find the first poetry created out of a “language really used by men”; in Percy Shelley, we’ll be seized by an art that announced itself a “sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it”; in John Keats, we’ll delight in verse dismissed as “mental masturbation.”  We’ll follow the rise of Napoleon, the fall of the Slave Trade, and the foundation of Australia—in newspapers and magazine articles, political pamphlets and diaries, as well as the parlors of Jane Austen.  Fulfills 1700-1900 requirement.  Papers, exams, floggings.

Studies in Victorian Period (ENGL 343)

Section: 090#2168
Instructor: M. Clarke
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

The Victorian novel is at once work of art, and, as Thackeray has said, a “delightful and easy” way to study history (as well as economics, ethics, psychology, religion, and countless other subjects).  By presenting their ideas in the form of pleasure and entertainment, novelists reach an enormous audience and strongly influence the cultures they live in.  In addition to reading the novels listed below, we will examine the biographical and historical contexts that inform the novels, and will devote some time to the theory of the novel.    Texts:  Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, 1848; Charlotte Brontë, Villette, 1853; Charles Dickens, Hard Times, 1854; George Eliot, Mill on the Floss, 1860; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1868; Sheridan LeFanu, Uncle Silas, 1899.

(Fulfills the 1700-1900 period requirement for majors.)

Contemporary Critical Theory (ENGL 354)

Section: 091#1657
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

This course introduces students to a range of contemporary theories about literature, literary criticism, and cultural studies. It is designed to explore the substantive and stylistic elements of theoretical writing in the humanities and to consider different ways in which such writing informs the practice of literary and cultural analysis. We will explore recent innovations in how we think about texts, authorship, narration, writing, and reading, review a variety of approaches to critical analysis and interpretation, and consider the social, cultural, and political dimensions of critical theory and literary analysis. Materials for this course will include a short introductory book on literary theory, a textbook on contemporary critical theory, some fiction and poetry, and at least one film. Requirements include 2 shorter critical essays, regular quizzes, and a final longer paper.

Section: 092#3488
Instructor: J. Kerkering
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM LSC

In this course students will become familiar with the wide range of questions that critics bring to bear on literary works when those critics write literary criticism. Students will learn to read and understand the philosophical and historical bases of certain theoretical questions, to recognize these questions lying behind the literary criticism they read, and to compose literary analyses with these theories serving as a foundation for their work.  Students will write weekly responses, two short papers (5-6 pages), a mid-term exam, and a final exam.

Literature From a Writer’s Perspective (ENGL 357)

Section: 093#1658
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
W 2:45 PM – 5:15 PM LSC

We will read from Chicago’s heritage of poetry and prose and compare what we discover there  to our own experiences of the city—intellectually and emotionally, as well as at the most basic and essential sensory levels of sight, sound, taste, smell, etc.  As citizens of this city and as artists, we will observe, react, and create. A portion of the course will involve consideration of the idea of an “urban sensibility” in literature and the arts and an examination of how such a sensibility may compliment, conflict with, or complicate other ways of seeing the world.  In addition to reading work by Chicago writers such as Carl Sandburg,  Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks,  Richard Wright, and Stuart Dybek, we will take a longer historical view of urban literature and read selections by such figures as William Blake, Walt Whitman, Jane Jacobs, and Helene Johnson. Most importantly, we will use the city of Chicago itself as our muse and literary laboratory. There will be off-campus excursions. There will be a midterm and final, as well as several creative assignments.

Studies in Poetry (ENGL 362)

Section: 094#3489
Instructor: D. Chinitz
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

We will focus on several distinctive voices in modern poetry, ranging from the traditional to the experimental, from the late nineteenth century to nearly the present, and from writers who seem firmly canonical to some whose historical place is less certain. The reading list will depend in part on the availability of texts, but tentatively includes W. H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Philip Larkin, Sharon Olds, and John Crowe Ransom.

This class will fulfill the post-1900 requirement.

Studies in American Literature : Latina/o Literature (ENGL 379)

Section: 095#4068
Instructor: S. Bost
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

Studies in American Culture (ENGL 382)

Literature of Crime in American Culture
Section: 097#5466
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:30 PM LSC

Americans’ current obsession with crime and criminals is not new.  Since the colonial era, generations of Americans have avidly consumed stories about bandits, rogues, murderers, and other lawbreakers.  This course will ask what the literature of crime can tell us about changing American ideas of law and order.  We’ll read non-fictional genres such as diaries, memoirs, and journalism.  We’ll also consider fictional narratives by Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Sherman Alexie.  Topics will include the link between narrative and forensics, the relationship between race and law, and the role of punishment, policing and surveillance in the creation of a democratic citizenry.

This course fulfills the 1700-1900 requirement for the English major.

Studies in African-American Literature (ENGL 384)

Rethinking Blackness in Contemporary American Literature and Culture
Section: 098#2440
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 1:40 PM – 2:30 PM LSC

With the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008, the public media, scholars, and political activists began to wonder if we were now living in a ?post-racial,? specifically ?post-black? society.  Additionally, the relatively recent publications of Gene Andrew Garrett?s anthology, African American Literature Beyond Race (2006) and Kenneth Warren?s, What Was African-American Literature? (2011) force us to now question the role of ?black? literature in the 21^st century. While this debate continues, there is undoubtedly a new generation of writers and artists who are invested in reconsidering and redefining the meaning of blackness, and offering new ways to think about the concept of race in culture, society, and of course, literature. While the readings for this course will focus primarily on late 20th century and 21st century African-American literature, we will also engage other aspects of contemporary black popular culture and critical texts that reflect upon and inform modern articulations of African-American identities.  Students should expect to participate regularly in class discussions, complete a series of in-class writing assignments, and produce a short essay (5 pages). There will be both a mid-term and a final exam for this course.

This class fulfills the multicultural and post-1900 literature requirements.

Advanced Seminar: (ENGL 390)

Gossip, Scandal, and Celebrity in American Literature
Section: 19W#5467
Instructor: J. Glover
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MWF 11:30 – 12:20 LSC

We often think of republicanism as a form of government that erases distinctions between people. However, the first generation of US citizens had an endless appetite for details about the lives of the famous and powerful.  Printed accounts of war victories and political milestones circulated alongside yellow sheets, tabloids, and novels of scandal.  This course will examine gossip and celebrity in US literary culture. We will consider how the public exposure of private lives shaped early republican understandings of power, democracy, sexuality, and equality.  We’ll start with several narratives of scandal, shame, and rumor among prominent political figures during the antebellum era.  Our focus will then shift to the Gilded Age, where we’ll consider how cultures of tabloid celebrity expressed both class aspirations and anxieties about growing inequality.  Next, we’ll consider the transformation of celebrity culture in the twentieth century.  Many of our narratives will be drawn from newspaper and periodical culture. However, we’ll also consider fictional (or thinly fictionalized?) narratives by William Hill Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Wells Brown, Edith Wharton, and others.  We’ll be guided by a number of questions.  How do private lives condition the exercise of reason in the civic sphere? Is obsession with celebrity compatible with democratic ideals?  Does shame have democratizing effects? 

Section: 20W#5468
Instructor: M. Bosco
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 11:30 AM – 12:45 PM LSC

This seminar will study in detail the life and work of one of the great American writers of the 20^th century, Flannery O’Connor.  She achieved canonical status in American arts and letters with the publication of her Collected Works by the Library of America, the first female writer to do so.  We will focus on the three major themes that come together in her work:  the American South, her status as a “serious” woman writer, and the role of her Catholic faith on her art.  This will be an intense reading course of all of her works:  2 novels, her complete short stories, her essays, and a collection of her letters.

Books:  Wise Blood; The Violent Bear it Away; The Complete Stories, Mystery and Manners, The Habit of Being.

Reading for Pleasure/Reading for Power
Section: 21W#5469
Instructor: P. Jay
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM LSC

The study of literature from the mid-1970s well into the 1990s was dominated by critical approaches that stressed literature’s engagement with forms of personal, social, cultural, and political power. Feminism, post-structuralist Marxism, multiculturalism, and postcolonial criticism, for example, were all broadly interested in the ways in which literature reflects– and reflects on – various forms of power as they are determined by things like gender, race, and class. Beginning in the mid-1990s a growing number of critics developed a critical response to this trend, calling for renewed attention to the aesthetic and formal qualities of literary texts, and to the practice of “close reading,” arguing we should spend less time subjecting literary works to historical, cultural, and political forms of analysis and more time reading them as works of art and exploring how – and why – they give us pleasure. This course will explore the conflict between these two approaches to reading and literary analysis, looking for ways in which they can be linked. Our guiding assumption will be that attention to the ways in which literary texts deal with power should not preclude attention to their aesthetic and formal qualities, and vice-versa. Our main goal with each of the literary works we read will be to understand how their aesthetic and formal qualities (their use of language, imagery, and symbols, their structure, narrative strategies, etc.) are being deployed to dramatize the substantive personal, social, cultural and political issues they are dealing with.  Texts for this course will include a selection of critical and theoretical essays read at the beginning of the semester to frame the critical debate we will be exploring. Literary texts will include some classic short fiction by writers including Hawthorne, James, and Cather and some more contemporary global fiction in English by Junot Díaz, Chimamanda Adichie, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Mohsin Hamid, and Arundhati Roy. Requirements will include two short critical essays and a longer final paper. Please keep in mind this is a writing intensive course which will require particular focus on the processes of drafting and revising critical essays.

This course fulfills the multicultural requirement.

Teaching English to Adults (ENGL 393)

Section: 01S#1706
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC

This course offers an excellent opportunity for service learning in the Rogers Park neighborhood and practical experience in tutoring adults in written and spoken English at the Loyola Community Literacy Center located in Dumbach Hall on the Lake Shore Campus in Rooms 05 and 06.  No previous tutoring experience is necessary.  Students tutor adult learners, some of whom are native English speakers preparing for the GED or improving their literacy skills.  Other learners are immigrants or refugees whose skills in their native language range from their being highly educated professionals to being perhaps functionally illiterate, and who may know some English or no English.  The Center is open M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters from 7-9:30 pm.  Students may take the English 393 course for 1, 2, or 3 credit hours; when taken for 3 credit hours, the course fulfills the Civic Engagement Core requirement.  Students must attend an orientation as well as bi-weekly class meetings (5 class meetings total; a 6^th meeting for those students taking the course for 3 credit hours and Core credit).  Students tutor one or two evenings a week, depending on the number of credit hours for which they are registered.  Students are required to keep and submit a weekly journal of their experiences, examine a textbook and journal articles concerned with literacy, language, and adult education, write four papers throughout the semester, and prepare a final paper or project.  Core students have an additional reading and written report.  More information can be found at www.luc.edu/literacy; follow the links to "tutoring" and then "course credit tutoring" for a complete description of the requirements for each of the credit hour electives. 

Section: 02S#1707
Instructor: J. Heckman
3.0 credit hours Lecture
MTWTR 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM LSC

This course offers an excellent opportunity for service learning in the Rogers Park neighborhood and practical experience in tutoring adults in written and spoken English at the Loyola Community Literacy Center located in Dumbach Hall on the Lake Shore Campus in Rooms 05 and 06.  No previous tutoring experience is necessary.  Students tutor adult learners, some of whom are native English speakers preparing for the GED or improving their literacy skills.  Other learners are immigrants or refugees whose skills in their native language range from their being highly educated professionals to being perhaps functionally illiterate, and who may know some English or no English.  The Center is open M-Th evenings during the fall and spring semesters from 7-9:30 pm.  Students may take the English 393 course for 1, 2, or 3 credit hours; when taken for 3 credit hours, the course fulfills the Civic Engagement Core requirement.  Students must attend an orientation as well as bi-weekly class meetings (5 class meetings total; a 6^th meeting for those students taking the course for 3 credit hours and Core credit).  Students tutor one or two evenings a week, depending on the number of credit hours for which they are registered.  Students are required to keep and submit a weekly journal of their experiences, examine a textbook and journal articles concerned with literacy, language, and adult education, write four papers throughout the semester, and prepare a final paper or project.  Core students have an additional reading and written report.  More information can be found at www.luc.edu/literacy; follow the links to "tutoring" and then "course credit tutoring" for a complete description of the requirements for each of the credit hour electives. 

Honors Tutorial: (ENGL 395)

Section: 22W#4071
Instructor: A. Frantzen
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

Everyone is familiar with trauma and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PSTD) but few people understand the controversies surrounding the emergence of these phenomena or their connections to the history of medicine and warfare. We will take as our central text Richard J. McNally’s Remembering Trauma (2003) and will read it alongside some novels about twentieth-century warfare, beginning with Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and ending with Anthony Swafford’s Jarhead. We also will read fiction about civilian perspectives on war, including Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Additional readings will focus on the relationship of feminist and gender criticism to studies of masculinity. Our aims are to develop expanded and enriched ideas of trauma and its relationship to gender as a tool for examining behavior, conflict, and resolution, and to understand how writing and reading illuminate and transform the experience of war for combatants and noncombatants alike. This is a writing-intensive class. Several short papers and one research paper, 15 pp.; for the list of texts from which readings will be chosen, please go to www.allenfrantzen.com after December 1. Books at Becks.

Advanced Writing: Poetry (ENGL 397)

Section: 23W#2171
Instructor: A. Baker
3.0 credit hours Lecture
TR 10:00 AM – 11:15 AM LSC

ENGL 397-23W is a writing intensive class

In this advanced poetry workshop, we will seek to deepen our engagement with poetry as an art form—both as readers and writers. Through reading, writing, and workshopping, we will grow more familiar with the anatomy and texture of poetry: image, word, voice, syntactical configurations, rhetorical devices— stanza, line, punctuation, and page. Your work will be given a great deal of individual attention in our workshops, and you will be offered the opportunity to work very closely with the    instructor as you write and revise your final project for the course—a portfolio of your best work.

Advanced Writing: Fiction (ENGL 398)

Section: 24W#1712
Instructor: D. Kaplan
3.0 credit hours Lecture
R 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM LSC

ENGL 398-24W is a writing intensive class

Students will build upon and refine skills in the art and craft of writing fiction learned in English 318, Fiction Writing, through (a) reading and discussing the craft of master fiction writers; (b) writing three original stories; and (c) having these stories discussed and critiqued by the instructor and by fellow writers in a supportive workshop setting.  Class participation is emphasized.

Special Studies in Literature (ENGL 399)

Section: 100#1714
Instructor: B. Ahad
3.0 credit hours Lecture

Students arrange for this course on an individual basis by consulting a faculty member who agrees to supervise the independent study.  When the student and the faculty member have agreed on the work to be done, the student submits the plan to the director of undergraduate programs for approval and registration.  Usually students will work independently and produce a research paper, under the direction of the faculty member.